Water White Paper

Josh Newbury Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

Oh my gosh! Well, I say to the right hon. Lady that I will not take any lectures from the Conservative party. Not only can they not be bothered to turn up for the statement, which shows an absolute disregard for the concerns of the public about the levels of pollution in our waterways—[Interruption.] I will answer her questions. We have done more in 18 months than the Conservatives did in 14 years, so I will not take any lectures from her. I am proud of our water White Paper and that my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), commissioned somebody of the stature of Sir Jon Cunliffe and appointed the Independent Water Commission to do the most fundamental review of our water system since privatisation—a privatisation that happened under their Thatcher Government.

The shadow Secretary of State asked how many recommendations we are taking forward. It is the vast majority and more, because we are also looking at agricultural pollution, which we did not ask Sir Jon to look at. The water White Paper talks about tackling that kind of pollution and I will not shy away from that. We are working in partnership with farmers, the National Farmers Union and others because that it is an important source of water pollution.

Again, I will not take lectures from the right hon. Lady about the environmental land management programme when the Conservatives underspent the farming budget. They could not even be bothered to get the money out of the door. She asked about infrastructure upgrades. The White Paper introduces a system that moves away from water companies marking their own homework to a regulator with teeth that gets a grip on the delivery of the £104 billion infrastructure investment. Under the Conservative Government, the pipes and pumps were left in a shocking state of disrepair because there was not the regulation nor the strong regulator that we need. That is what this water White Paper and the upcoming water Bill will deliver.

The right hon. Lady talks about improving water supply. It is absolutely correct—maybe we can agree on something—that we have seen very poor performance from South East Water in recent weeks, and I was in the area last week to meet constituents of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin)—[Interruption.] The right hon. Lady asked whether I should have gone earlier. Did she bother to go? [Interruption.] Listen, this is a privatised industry because of decisions made in 1989. I called on the regulator Ofwat to examine the licence conditions and whether they had been breached by South East Water. I do not remember her saying any such thing. I have also hauled in the chair of South East Water to ask for an urgent investigation into what happened last week and the week before, as well as for two weeks before Christmas.

This water White Paper is the most ambitious reform in a generation to our water system. It is severely needed because of the blind eye that the Conservatives turned when they were in government and the record levels of pollution in our waterways.

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

I welcome the White Paper because customers right across the country have been failed by their water company, and all too often, when turning to Ofwat for support and to hold executives to account, they have been met with bureaucracy and a weak response. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the creation of a new combined, powerful water ombudsman, set out in the White Paper, will finally give customers a route to resolve complaints quickly when companies fail to deliver this most basic of public services?

[Emma Reynolds]

I agree with my hon. Friend. That is why the main focus of our reforms is to create a single, more powerful and integrated regulator. At the moment, as I said in my statement, we have duplication as well as gaps. We have consumers who are not being served well, so we need a regulator that gets a grip on the investment in maintaining our water infrastructure and on bearing down on pollution incidents. We have already made a start on that, but the new regulator will have more teeth and more power to do that. My hon. Friend is right to say that we need that single, more powerful and integrated regulator to ensure we deliver better outcomes for consumers and the environment.